article · Applied Sciences
High-strength aluminium alloys such as AA7075 and AA2024 are vital materials in aircraft manufacturing for structural components like stringers and skins. This investigation demonstrates the use of additive friction stir deposition to build continuous multilayered parts of AA7075-T6 onto an AA2024-T4 substrate sheet. By testing rotation speeds from 200 to 1000 rpm and feed rates from 1 to 5 mm per minute, optimal operational parameters were identified. Defect-free deposits without interface gaps were successfully produced at 400 rpm across several feeding rates. The resulting materials displayed a significantly refined grain structure and evenly dispersed precipitates compared to the starting alloy. Operating at a feed rate of 3 mm per minute alongside 400 rpm yielded the highest hardness and compressive strength, confirming the viability of this solid-state additive manufacturing technique for combining these specific aircraft-grade aluminium alloys.
Aircraft construction relies heavily on high-strength aluminium alloys that are notoriously difficult to process with conventional melting-based additive manufacturing. By employing solid-state additive friction stir deposition, manufacturers can join dissimilar high-performance aluminium alloys without typical melting defects. This offers a practical pathway towards producing stronger, fine-grained structural components with enhanced mechanical properties.
The findings are relevant to aerospace engineering and industrial manufacturers fabricating multi-alloy aircraft structural parts such as skins and stringers. Because the study demonstrated defect-free multilayered builds on a laboratory scale across specific parameter windows, the technology represents applied and tested research that requires scaling and component-level testing before industrial adoption.
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In the aircraft industry, the high-strength aluminum alloys AA7075 and AA2024 are extensively used for the manufacture of structural parts like stringers and skins, respectively. Additive manufacturing (AM) of the AA7075-T6 aluminum alloy via friction stir deposition to build continuously multilayered parts on a substrate of AA2024-T4 aluminum has not been attempted so far. Accordingly, the present work aimed to explore the applicability of building multilayers of AA7075-T6 alloy on a substrate sheet of AA2024-T4 alloy via the additive friction stir deposition (AFSD) technique and to optimize the deposition process parameters. The experiments were conducted over a wide range of feed rates (1–5 mm/min) and rotation speeds (200–1000 rpm). The axial deposition force and the thermal cycle were recorded. The heat input to achieve the AFSD was calculated. The AA7075 AFSD products were evaluated visually on the macroscale. The microstructures were also investigated utilizing an optical microscope and scanning electron microscope (SEM) equipped with an advanced EDS technique. As well as the presence phases, the mechanical performance of the deposited materials in terms of hardness and compressive strength was also examined. The results showed that the efficiency of the deposition process was closely related to the amount of heat generated, which was governed by the feeding rate, the rotational speed, and the downward force. AA7075 defect-free continuously multilayered parts were produced without any discontinuity defects at the interface with the substrate at deposition conditions of 1, 2, 3, and 4 mm/min and a constant 400 rpm consumable rod rotation speed (CRRS). The additively deposited AA7075-T6 layers exhibited a refined grain structure and uniformly distributed fragment precipitates compared to the base material (BM). The gain size decreased from 25 µm ± 4 for the AA7075-T6 BM to 1.75 µm ± 0.41 and 3.75 µm ± 0.78 for the AFSD materials fabricated at 1 and 4 mm/min deposition feeding rates, respectively, at 400 rpm/min. Among the feeding rates used, the 3 mm/min and 400 rpm rod rotation speed produced an AA7075 deposited part possessing the highest average hardness of 165 HV ± 5 and a compressive strength of 1320 MPa.
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DOI: 10.3390/app131810255
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